Sage 6 and Aspect Ratios

[reggie14]

I installed Sage 6 last night and discovered a problematic new "feature". Its not necessarily a bug, just a feature that doesn't play well with my setup.

I have a dual monitor setup on my client PC. One monitor is widescreen the other is not. If I setup the aspect ratio to 4x3, everything looks fine on the 4x3 monitor but things are screwed up on the widescreen monitor, and vice versa of course.

The problem is, its not just the menus that change by changing the aspect ratio. The video playback settings change as well. The video is either stretched vertically or horizontally when I play back video on the monitor that doesn't match the aspect ratio settings. Sometimes I don't think it necessarily stretches things, but it letterboxes the display unnecessarily.

It seems to be related to decoders, but I'm really not sure. I always have problems with the mpeg4 videos being stretched. I thought I was having problems with mpeg2 video as well under the standard pure video decoder, but after switching to the post processor decoder and back it seems to letterbox stuff.

This was not a problem with any decoders in Sage 5. Is there something I can do to fix this?

I like the new features of Sage 6, but I don't really need them on my client. Can I run the Sage 5 client with the Sage 6 server? I realize I wouldn't be able to access certain features. But, would I at least be able to see and playback any videos that I convert via the interface on my MVP?

Edit: Speaking of Sage 5, if I can use the Sage5 client, does any have the download link for the last version? I don't have the installer anymore.

[nielm]

FYI: there is no upgrade charge for V6 client from any previous version, so you have no reason not to use V6 client!

[GKusnick]

I wouldn't count on being able to use a V5 client with a V6 server. Even if it appears to work at first, it's an unsupported combo and the first time you run into trouble, tech support is going to tell you to use the current client.

Can't you just set the Sage client to always run on one specific monitor? If that's not practical for you, if you really need to be able to use it on either monitor, then I'd suggest setting up two different SageClient.properties files with different videoframe/display_aspect_ratio properties, and use batch files to swap them back and forth depending on which monitor you want to use.

[reggie14]

I know there's no upgrade charge. My complaint is that I can't get version 6 working properly with my dual monitor setup. Thats why I wanted to revert back to version 5. However, I just tried it and found out that they don't work together.

As I said, I'm not really sure to what extent this is a Sage problem and to what extent this is a decoder problem. However, as I never had problems with version 5 using the same decoders, I really think its mostly Sage.

I'll give you an example of what happens when playing mpeg2. Remember, one of my monitors is widescreen the other is not. I have the aspect ratio setting to 4x3. I start a video is Sage on the non-widescreen monitor. Oddly enough, there are thin black bars running across the top and bottom I can't get rid of by changing the video size or the horizontal and vertical stretch settings, but they don't bother me. I don't remember having those little bars with version 5.

Then, I move the video to the widescreen monitor. Usually it displays fine at first, but if I click on the Sage window or I resize the window, Sage adds black bars to the sides of the window and Sage compresses the video to fit inside these black bars.

Then, I move the video back to the 4x3 monitor. Usually, the black bars stay on both sides of the window, compressing the video. However, when I click on the window the video expands over the black bars.

When I play mpeg4 video I always end up with things stretched. Actually, right now I can't get it working on either monitor properly. It seems to be stretching the video vertically all the time, as the top and bottom of the video are not visible. When I move it to the widescreen monitor the video fills the entire screen, stretching it out.

I hope one of the Sage people see this. I know getting multimonitor support has been a pretty low priority for them. If this is a Sage issue, I would think fixing this would be an even lower priority, given that it only impacts people who run dual monitors with different aspect ratios. I would like to know if this is something they would try to fix.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Can't you just set the Sage client to always run on one specific monitor? If that's not practical for you, if you really need to be able to use it on either monitor, then I'd suggest setting up two different SageClient.properties files with different videoframe/display_aspect_ratio properties, and use batch files to swap them back and forth depending on which monitor you want to use.

The great thing about having dual monitors is being able to drag and drop windows to whatever screen you want, depending on what you are doing. Having to close Sage and re-open it whenever I want to move Sage to a different screen isn't really a reasonable solution to the problem.


Edit:

I just realized something strange about the "Fill" aspect ratio mode. If I use that setting, then most of my problems seem to solve themselves. Sage doesn't try to add letterboxes or try to stretch or compress the video. In fact, resizing the window still causes Sage to resize the video proportionally, maintaining the 4x3 aspect ratio of my content. I didn't expect that. I thought if I stretched out the window horizontally it would cause the video to be stretched horizontally. Is this a bug?

Of course, I imagine if I ever try to play content that isn't 4x3 then everything will get screwed up, so I'd still like some sort of solution that would allow me to use "Source" as the aspect ratio mode.

Also, I still can't get mpeg4 to work very well. If I use the divx codec then I don't have problems with the video being stretched vertically. However, no matter what aspect ratio settings I use (ie, even when I setup sage for a widescreen monitor), when I play back mpeg4 content fullscreen is always stretches the video horizontally and takes up the whole screen.

[nielm]

V6 has a 'Display aspect ratio' setting in detailed setup.

This tells sage whether you have a 4x3 or 16x9 display, and Sage will re-proportion the videos (and text and pictures) so that they appear to be in the right aspect ratio on the display, no matter what the resolution is...

You have a problem, because you have 2 displays with different AR's. You may need to switch from one display AR to the other whenever you switch displays...

(Fill aspect ratio works fine on my display -- the video is displayed filling the window no matter what shape it is)

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by nielm

You have a problem, because you have 2 displays with different AR's. You may need to switch from one display AR to the other whenever you switch displays...

I understand that, I just prefer the old behavior in Sage to this behavior. I realize almost everyone only has to worry about one display aspect ratio, which is why I doubt Sage is going to do anything about this.

Since the old method must have been problematic for some people obviously some sort of fix was in order. It seems like there should be a way for Sage to detect what the resolution is for the display that it is on and modify the aspect ratio settings accordingly.

Oh well. I guess I can just be thankful that I'm experiencing this odd bug where "Fill" doesn't actually fill the screen. I should probably submit a bug report, but this is one bug I don't want fixed! Out of curiosity, what decoder do you use? Overlay or VMR?

I'm guessing it must be a decoder issue. For mpeg4 video Fill causes the screen to be filled.

So, the biggest problem remaining is that I haven't found a workaround for mpeg4 video. I don't know what I did, but I seem to have Sage letterboxing the sage window for mpeg2 so the videos don't get stretched out. But, for mpeg4 it stretches stuff. Are there any mpeg4 codecs where I can force a 4:3 aspect ratio? The divx codec I use has such a setting, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by reggie14

It seems like there should be a way for Sage to detect what the resolution is for the display that it is on and modify the aspect ratio settings accordingly.

Display resolution isn't the whole story. My 16x9 plasma screen has a native resolution of 1024x768. The pixels aren't square. The only way for Sage to know that this is a 16x9 monitor and not a 4x3 monitor is for me to tell it so using the display aspect ratio setting. That's why that feature was added.

If you really want to be able to drag the Sage window back and forth from one monitor to another, then Sage is going to need to be told the physical aspect ratio (not just the display resolution) of the target monitor each time you drag. If you're willing to do some customization, it should be fairly straightforward to add a one-button command to do this, or even to fork off a thread that periodically checks to see which monitor you're running on and sets the display aspect ratio automatically to some preconfigured value for each monitor.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Display resolution isn't the whole story. My 16x9 plasma screen has a native resolution of 1024x768. The pixels aren't square. The only way for Sage to know that this is a 16x9 monitor and not a 4x3 monitor is for me to tell it so using the display aspect ratio setting. That's why that feature was added.

I realize that. I also realize that there's a lot more people in your situation than in mine. So, while such a feature was necessary, I wish there was a way to get back to the old way aspect ratios were handled.

Also, it seems as though Sage's setting for aspect ratios overrides any codec preferences. I saw that both divx and xvid have settings for forcing an aspect ratio. Neither of them work in Sage. The divx setting doesn't seem to do anything. In xvid, forcing 4:3 seems to be responsible for the problem that I was having with the top and bottom of video being cut off.

[reggie14]

I've been playing with the aspect ratio settings in the mpeg4 codecs. As I said, but the xvid and the divx codec have a setting that claims to force an aspect ratio. However, I can't find any indication that changing that setting does anything in any program. I tried playing back mpeg4 in WMP and WMP Classic and in both cases changing the setting has no effect.

In fact, WMP Classic specifically has its own option for overriding the aspect ratio. Even changing that has no effect. Has anyone else tried to do this before>

[Lucas]

reggie14, I have had the same issue with V6 since the betas started.

What I did is to set my display AR to 4:3 and customise one of the ARs, Source, to 80% horizontal stretch which I use whenever I watch 4x3 material on my 16x9 display.

with Display AR permanently set to 4:3, the 4:3 and 16:9 ARs work as intended on the 4:3 SDTV I have.

When I switch to the 16:9 Projector, I use the customised as above Source AR for viewing 4:3 material and the 4x3 AR for watching anamorphic 16:9 material and all is well.

I had to set the NVidia Decoder to raw aspect ratio.

[Taddeusz]

You don't say whether your non-widescreen monitor is an LCD or not. Pretty much all LCD's below 20" are 5:4 and not 4:3. Put 1280/1024 into a calculator. You get 1.25 and not 1.333333 which is what you'd get for 4:3. Normal LCD panels are a little bit more square and so if you have it set to 4:3 you should get small bars on the top and bottom.

[reggie14]

You're right, Taddeusz, both my monitors are LCD so they are 5:4 and 16:10. Really those are the settings I've been using in Sage.

Maybe I didn't understand your comment, but at least for me its when I have the 5:4 display AR set when I see little black bars for 4:3 content. If I set the display AR to 4:3 then it fills the screen completely. The picture looks unstretched to me when I have the little black bars, but maybe thats because I'm used to it. How is it suppose to work?

Thanks for the suggestion, Lucas. Now I realize why mpeg2 video is working "correctly" for me. I've had "content default" set as the AR in the codec configuration. So, that must be forcing a 4:3 AR. I just wish I could find a similar method for forcing my mpeg4 codec to a 4:3 AR. I haven't tried it, but it sounds like your suggestion would work for me. I still miss the old way of handling aspect ratios.

[Taddeusz]

It should work exactly as you described. If you're telling it that your monitor is 4:3 but is really 5:4 it will stretch the video to fit the screen if the original content is 4:3 TV. At the same time if you tell it that your monitor is 5:4 and are viewing the same 4:3 content it will place the black bars on the top and bottom to maintain the proper aspect ratio.

[reggie14]

Interestingly, the Placeshifter works pretty well on my setup.

In the client, when I move the window from the 5:4 monitor the the 16:10 monitor, Sage stretches the video in some way or another. In the Placeshifter it does not. Also interestingly, I have to set up the Placeshifter with a 16:10 AR for it to look correct. If I set it up with 5:4 then the video is stretched on both monitors.

I wonder if this is a bug.

[MTuckman]

I hate to reopen this topic, but I am having a problem with the aspect ratio's with my HDTV, and it is something I did to myself.

I have been having a lot of problems with stuttering, freezing, all the way up to the computer itself locking up and needing a hard reboot.

Yesterday I finally decided to deal with it and:

• upgraded my Nvidia drivers to the latest version
• upgraded the Java to version 6
• reloaded my Nvidia PureVideo Decoder
• installed the complete AC3Filter
• changed back to the Nvidia Decoder from the Intervideo Decoder
• and went back to the Server/Client setup I used to use.

And before anyone says anything, I did them one at a time, watched an hour of TV or so, before I did the next upgrade.

I also changed the aspect ratio to FILL based on a comment from Jeff about a finding of his related to stuttering.

The end result is the computer and Sage both seem to be a lot more stable, the stuttering is either gone or barely noticeable - and what little stuttering I have I think may partially be an issue with a couple of my older hard drives.

The problem:

What has happened now, is that the SD broadcasts are now being presented in the 4:3 aspect ratio, and nothing I do seems to make a difference. Before this, the HD broadcasts were in 16:9 and the SD broadcasts were stretched to 16:9 also.

I suspect it is the Nvidia PureVideo Decoder, a setting that I am just not noticing. Too many late nights dealing with kids and this computer, and just not thinking straight.

So... Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[reggie14]

So, let me get this straight, you want 4:3 content stretched to 16:9?

One thing you can try is to look at the PureVideo configuration. For the display type setting, it sounds like you have "Content Default" set. Try switching it to "Anamorphic/Raw".

By the way, I still didn't get my aspect ratio problem solved. Mpeg4 video either ends up stretched on my 16:10 monitor or my 5:4 monitor. I can't find any mpeg4 codec configuration settings that help. In fact, video looks fine on either monitor when I use any other media player. So, it certainly appears to be the case that the new aspect ratio features of v6 are screwing up my setup.

[MTuckman]

Originally Posted by reggie14

One thing you can try is to look at the PureVideo configuration. For the display type setting, it sounds like you have "Content Default" set. Try switching it to "Anamorphic/Raw".

Well, I suspect that you are right, and it is in the PureVideo settings.

My 14 month old got hold of the remote, hit a bunch of buttons, and the next thing you know the SD content is stretched to 16:9! It took me half an hour to figure out he ended up changing the video from Overlay to VMR9.

Went back and forth between the settings and sure enough it works with VMR9 but not with Overlay. Problem is there is still some stuttering with VMR9 on the HD content. So for at least the Golden Globes tonight I will leave it on VMR9 and once it is over go back to Overlay and check out the PureVideo settings and see what is going on.

Sorry you're not making more progress with your problem...

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by reggie14

By the way, I still didn't get my aspect ratio problem solved. Mpeg4 video either ends up stretched on my 16:10 monitor or my 5:4 monitor.

If it helps, I've uploaded an STVI that adds a quick aspect ratio toggle button to the menu header above the clock. Click here for details.